I can’t tell you how awesome (and weird) it is to have the print version of the book in hand, hot off the press. The smell of the ink and feel of the cover bring back sweet memories from my print design days. I can’t wait to start hearing readers’ feedback and joining conversations. Author pride going at warp 10.

This is a pretty amazing development. As the patent war heats-up in the mobile computing sector, Scifi is being recognized as instances of “prior art.”

Essentially, Samsung is using a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey to bash Apple’s IP case, citing it as prior art for tablets. There isn’t much in the scene that shows tablets in actual use (two sit on a table playing an interview but there’s no interaction with them). Better clips might have come from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which uses PADDs throughout that and the following series.

1. To interaction designers, this means knowing scifi could become a vital part of their work, since it’s public prior art.

2. To studios, this creates some pressure to use experienced designers (outside of production designers) on staff (or consulting) for interface/interaction design. It might also signal the possibility for studios to begin patenting what comes out of their own imaginations, since the relevancy to industry may be just a matter of time.

We haven’t posted in awhile but we thought I’d give a quick update. The book is coming together really well and the first draft should be finished in roughly 30 days (at least, we hope). We thought we’d publish the list of properties we’ve reviewed so far (not all are films and television shows). Not all of these will make it into the book and it’s clear to us that we have way more material than one book will hold (sequel perhaps?). However, we want to make sure that, on this maiden voyage, we don’t leave-out anything critical (or something we’re going to be crucified for later, for not including). So, in the interest of transparency, here is what we’ve made it through so far. If you don’t see something on the list that you think we should know about, now’s the time to speak up!

Brian David Johnson is a futurist at Intel who’s work complements our own investigation well. He’s a sharp, fun, and fascinating guy who is exploring how Science Fiction is already being used as a prototyping process for the development of real technologies, products, and services.

His latest two books (he wrote Screen Future last year), investigate the subject from two different perspectives. The first, Science Fiction Prototyping, directly investigates how SF can be used as a design technique, complete with interviews, examples, and some process description. It’s a fun, smart read. You can download his book in PDF here: http://www.morganclaypool.com/toc/csl/1/1

Upcoming Appearances and Presentations

Past Appearances and Presentations

We’re really excited to finally have this book on its way to being published. We have been researching this material for over three years now, and have found some incredible examples we’ll share with you.

So, to start with, what are the moments in Science Fiction that have excited you, inspired you, or taught you something about interaction and interfaces?